Question

An airplane is flying at a height of 3 miles above the ground. The distance along the ground from the

airplane to the airport is 7.5 miles. What is the angle of depression from the airplane to the airport?
Round to the nearest degree.

Answer 1

the angle of depression is approx 22 degrees

Explanation:

Model drawn below to visualize

I represented the angle of depression as x

Since two side lengths are given, we can use tangent to find the angle of depression

tan x= 3/7.5

We then use inverse tangent to find the angle measure:

m<x=
`tan^(-1)`(3/7.5)

m<x is approx 21.8 or 22 when rounded to the nearest degree

(when using tan, inverse tan, sin, cos, inv... use deg on calculator when finding angle of depression, solving triangles, etc.)